The Visioning eBook

She stood before him with clenched hands, eyes blazing.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you
touch me!” And she left him.

In the hall Nora stopped her to say there were not
enough champagne glasses. She made no reply.
Champagne glasses—!

She looked after Worth. Then she went to Ann.

“Well, Ann,” she began, her voice high
pitched and unsteady, “this is about the limit,
isn’t it?”

“Oh Katie,” moaned Ann, “you told
me—­you told me—­you understood.
Why, Katie—­you must have known there was
some one.”

“Oh I knew there was some one, all right,”
said Katie, her voice getting higher and higher, her
cheeks more and more red—­“only I just
hadn’t figured, you see, on its being some one
I knew! Why how under the sun,” she asked,
laughing wildly, “did you ever meet Major Darrett?”

“I—­I’ll try to tell you,”
faltered Ann miserably. “I want to.
I want to make you understand. Katie!—­I’ll
die if you don’t understand!”

She looked so utterly wretched that Katie made heroic
effort to get herself under control—­curb
that fearful desire to laugh. “I will try,”
she said quietly as she could. “I will
try.”

“Why, Katie,” Ann began, “does it
make so much difference—­just because you
know him?”

“It makes all the difference! Can’t
you see—­why it makes it so vulgar.”

Ann threw back her head. “Just the same—­it
wasn’t vulgar. What I felt wasn’t
vulgar. Why, Katie,” she cried appealingly,
“it was my Something Somewhere! You didn’t
think that vulgar!”

“Oh no,” laughed Katie, “not before
I knew it was Major Darrett! But tell me—­I’ve
got to know now. What is it? Where did you
meet him? Just how bad is it, anyhow?”

It must have been desperation led Ann to spare neither
Katie nor herself. “I met him,” she
said baldly, “one night as I was standing on
the corner waiting for a car. He had an automobile.
He asked me to get in it—­and I did.
And that—­began it.”

Katie stepped back from her in horror, the outrage
she felt stamped all too plainly on her face.
“And you call that not vulgar? Why
it was common. It was low.”

Then Ann turned. “Was it? Oh I don’t
know that you need talk. I wouldn’t say
much—­if I were you. I guess I saw the
look on his face when I came in. Don’t
think for a minute I don’t know that look. You
got it there. And let me tell you another
thing. Just let me tell you another thing!
Whatever I did—­whatever I did—­I
know I never had the look you did when I came in!
I never had that look of fooling with things!”

CHAPTER XXV

She had no idea how long she had been walking.
She was conscious of being glad that there was so
big a place for walking, that walking was not a preposterous
thing to be doing. She passed several groups of
soldiers. They were reassuring; they looked so
much in the natural order of things and gave no sign
of her being out of that order.